The message boards of UrbanBaby.com are home to some of the most self-loathing, wealthy, haughty, and miserable parents in all of America. Or are they? Even to our keen internet eyes, it is sometimes impossible to tell whether an UrbanBaby poster is a rich person, or a troll impersonating a rich person. Can you help?

Thread topic: "Does no one understand what the actual definition of "poverty" is? I get that an HHI of $200K or $250K can feel like it isn't going very far in NY, but how can people come on this board and claim that they feel impoverished at that income level? It's so absurd."Comment: "Stop with this nonsense. Our two income 600 K Gross hardly covers it. DD in Rodeph Lower School. DS at Trevor. UWS Town House: Mortgage and Upkeep. All the lessons. A week at Telluride. A week in Anguilla. Two summer camps. Mandatory Israel for the kids. DH actually played golf last year on a public course and I do spinning at Soul Cycle only twice a week."
[Reply]: "Wait this is a joke, right? Or are you trolling without trying?"
"This is not a joke. This is real life. We do not even have a live in just a 3x/week housekeeper.I am not claiming to be in poverty but but in "our circle" we are considered to be struggling."

2) Nannies who didn't even graduate from Ivy League schools expect a living wage?!

Thread topic: "Any time I check babysitter websites all the nannies (at least those who have some experience and aren't high school kids) indicate they want around $20/hr. That seems crazy to me."Comment: "Many of these nannies are hardly college educated. I made less money right out of an Ivy League than what some of them are asking for. That to me is not normal. Yes, I appreciate all the hard work, but no, you don't get to make more money than someone who's had more education and is working a corporate job."

3) What is a proper allowance for a struggling college student?

Thread topic: "Is $1,300 per month allowance ok for [son] going away for college?"Comment: "I gave mine $2K plus an emergency card while they were at NYU. It is really difficult to get the full college experience without being able to do and wear all the things your friends do. Don't deny your son this one opportunity to have a great college experience. Did you deny him private school for K-12? denying him this cash would be the equivalent of sending him to public school."

4) I grew up wealthy—and strangely, I never felt poor

Thread topic: "I grew up middle class. My parents HHI was never more that 150K. However my grandparents had a fair amount of money, and helped us out a fair amount. They bought my parents their home as a wedding gift (it cost 60K in 1979). They paid for all their grandchildrens private education from K to as high as they were interested in perusing. My point is, I don't know if it's different because I grew up outside of New York, or because I was in school in the 90s, but I never felt poor at any of the private schools I attended. It didn't even occur to me, any differences I saw between my peers and I was just attributed to my parents being lame."Comment: [After dozens of comments ridiculing the original poster] "Hold on a sec, she never said her parents HHI was always $150K, only that it was never more than that. In 1979 you could have gotten a 2BR, 2BA apt in Manhattan for $60K on the UES, so that's not necessarily the cheapest area that she's talking about. I think that it's legitimate to say that she was MC meaning that they lived comfortably but not luxuriously as a family but for her gp's paying for private school. OP, I agree with you and I grew up in NYC - i knew that other kids had more money than we did but never felt "poor" just "not rich" which i don't think is a bad thing and htere were plenty of other not rich kids there too! i think these days, there is so much new money in nyc that really pursues all the trappings of the wealthy - the right buildings, the right schools, the right job, etc. and it's very hard to keep up with that. when i was grwoing up, the rich kids wore benetton not chanel!"